More Bear Attack Survival Advice From Someone Who Obviously Hasn’t Been Attacked

It has always tickled me that “experts” or wannabe experts are at liberty to hand out gads of advice on how to survive an attack by a bear. To my knowledge, I’ve never heard or read anybody’s advice who has actually been attacked by a bear. But that doesn’t stop people from telling you what to do…right or wrong.

The latest, mostly nonsense, comes to us from an article found on Pajamas Media – “How to Survive a Bear Attack in America.” Are we to guess that none of this advice will work outside of America? Or is it that only American bears attack people?

The first mistake the author makes is to very quickly give advice to never “play dead” when being attacked by a bear because this act “can quickly lead to actual death.” A bit later in the article, the author advises, “If the grizzly charged you because it considered you to be a threat, you’ll want the bear to think you’ve passed on. Once the bear believes that you are a harmless corpse, the chances are really good that it’ll give up and move on.”

Perhaps the best advice is to not pay heed to this guy’s advice.

It also appears that this guy has full faith and confidence in bear spray as the only way to ward off an attacking bear. I wonder if he’s ever used it? Hope that the wind isn’t blowing when the attack happens. However, read this insane explanation about which kind of bear spray to use: “Both bear spray and normal pepper spray contain oleoresin capsicum, the chemical found in chili peppers that gives a nasty burning sensation when sprayed in the faces of humans and bears, but the difference is that bear spray contains 80-90 percent less of the noxious chemical than regular pepper spray. That’s because pepper sprays aren’t intended to incapacitate a grizzly, it’s designed to surprise and scare the hulking creature away from you; using pepper spray that was made for use on human goons on a bear is overkill!”

Seriously? Think about it for a minute. I agree that if I were being attacked by “human goons” I would want the most powerful spray available, or better yet the most powerful handgun on the planet today. But the same holds true for a damned attacking bear. Why would I care if I was using “overkill” to stop an attacking bear? The damned bear is probably about to rip me to shreds and I should be concerned over whether or not I’m using too much of a deterrent? Only an idiot thinks this way.

You can’t make this stuff up. Only a willing participant in this animal-perverse society would be concerned about harming the bear and not giving a rat’s hind end about harming another person.

According to this clown, if you are being attacked by a polar bear, you might as well pull out that most powerful handgun in the world and blow your brains out. He suggests that if the non “overkill” bear spray doesn’t work (huh?), “use whatever weapon you have available.” Isn’t that “overkill?” If there’s a chance the bear spray isn’t going to work on a charging bear, why not carry a weapon that will?

I love this suggestion. Okay, so you are being attacked by a polar bear. According to this guy, “Avoid the enraged, starving polar bear’s powerful jaws and massive meat hook claws.”

Yes, the last time I was having a fight with a polar bear, I survived by using Mohammed Ali’s famed, “Rope a Dope.” I was able to avoid the powerful claws and jaws, kicked the bear in the nuts and while it was bent over in pain I remembered the advice to “back away slowly and cautiously.”

I am especially amused when experts give lip service to the reasons why bears might attack a person. It seems that in their pea brains the only reasons are either they are hungry or pissed off at you. Evidently this author suggests that the tactics you use against a hungry bear are different than from an angry bear. However, the author doesn’t expertly tell us how to tell the difference. Perhaps you could just ask the bear.

Always the advice to “scare off” an attacking bear is to “LOOK BIG!” This author in question doesn’t actually give that advice. The closest he comes is to tell readers to “stand tall.” Once you’ve calmly taken up the “tall” stance, then commence to kick the shit out of the bear. Works every time!

If you encounter a bear, any kind of bear in any kind of setting, it’s a crap shoot. If you come armed so as not to harm the bear with “overkill” then chances are you are willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the bear. God bless you! No matter how much experts want to pretend they know something, they don’t. Animals don’t think like humans and the more humans pretend to believe that animals rationalize things like people do, the more trouble you are likely to get into. When a person tells you that, “bear don’t like surprises,” what, exactly, are they basing that premise on? I can tell you. It’s Romance Biology and Voodoo Science. We want so much to rationalize a bear’s behavior based upon our own. It just doesn’t work that way.

Remember, after all this advice, consider the idea, BEFORE heading into bear country, that perhaps a bear will attack you just because it wants to.